4/23/2018

FRANCE/IRAN/NUCLEAR/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Emmanuel Macron of France was scheduled to arrive at the White House on Monday [4-23-18] on a mission to persuade President Trump not to scrap the multinational nuclear agreement with Iran, even as Tehran’s foreign minister warned that there was no alternative to the deal and ‘it is either all or nothing.’ Arriving in Washington just weeks before a May 12 deadline for Mr. Trump to keep or abandon the accord, Mr. Macron hoped to use his unusual bond with the American president to make the case that the world was safer with the deal in place. The French leader has promised to work with the United States and European partners to strengthen it…Iran agreed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for relief from crippling international sanctions. But Mr. Trump and other critics have assailed the agreement because some of its provisions begin expiring after a decade and it does not block Iran’s ballistic missile program, much less address its actions to destabilize the region.”

-Peter Baker and Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “Emmanuel Macron Heads to White House to Lobby Trump on Iran,” The New York Times online, April 23, 2018